


This Is Not A Love Story

by seventyseven



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Relationship(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 01:39:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventyseven/pseuds/seventyseven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Not A Love Story

It begins, as all good stories do, on a boardwalk at sunset. The boy leans against the varnished wooden fence, the girl with whom he has fallen madly and hopelessly in love with laughing beside him. He is 15, she just a few weeks his junior, and neither yet old enough to know much about anything.

She smiles and pulls him towards the shore as his thoughts pop like the balloons at the dart toss, breath catching in his throat. A cool, salty breeze picks up and ruffles their hair affectionately as they set in towards the ocean. The sky is a watercolour of pinks and golds and muted purples, the sea lapping at their feet as they step closer to the water. She lets go of his hand, smiling shyly from underneath dark lashes, eyes golden in the sun’s dying light. Then, in a moment of impulse that he believes he will surely regret, he grabs her face in his hands and crashes their lips together in what is supposed to be a kiss. He’s never done it before, isn’t even sure if he’s doing it right, but it seemed to have the intended effect because when they break away, she’s grinning and breathless, and the sea roars behind them in thunderous applause.

This is not their story.

It begins, as most romances do, somewhere wholly bland and predictable, but she’s close to 25 and she’s tired of waiting. She likes the way he dresses and how he orders his coffee- medium double double, two cream two sugar- and she thinks there are other thinks there are other things she can learn to like about him too.

She steps down the aisle in a dress handmade by her mother, scratchy against her skin and several years out of fashion. Before she knows what’s happening she’s saying I do, and there’s a ring on her finger and a pair of sloppy lips on hers, cold and forceful. She holds his hand as they exit, allowing herself to be pulled towards the reception, careful not to crack the thick veneer of makeup they’d spent so long applying.

They fuck maybe once a year, more out of marital obligation than anything else. She has a child, then another one, and he’s at work too often to act as any sort of father figure. Her ring gets lost somewhere and they never bother to get a new one- she never liked jewelry anyway. She leaves her job to take care of the kids and never goes back. He’s supportive.

18 years in and she knows he sees other women on his “business trips” to Montreal but can’t bring herself to care. He leaves to play “hockey” with his “buddies” and she sits on a computer slowed by porn viruses she doesn’t know how to get rid of, watching cat videos on YouTube. She hurts him in his sleep. He tells her he wishes he had a gun in the house. Their children have a hard time explaining to their friends that this is normal.

25 years in and they’re not even sure why they’re in it anymore, children long grown and out of the house. Maybe it’s because they’re scared they won’t find anyone else. Maybe it’s because they think they don’t deserve anyone else. If there’s such a thing as mutual Stockholm Syndrome then they’re the poster children and they wouldn’t have it any other way. When he leaves to play hockey he takes a bottle of pills with him, and she reads softcore erotica novels she doesn’t bother to hide when the kids come over. She stopped wearing makeup a long time ago. He still takes his coffee the same way.

39 years in and he dies of a heart attack. The kids cry at the hollow slap of dirt hitting pine box. She doesn’t. Nobody is surprised.


End file.
